It looks like Office Open XML has incurred a slowdown on the ISO Fast Track to …

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While Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) has been standardized by Ecma International, it still has yet to be accepted as an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard. The company is hoping that OOXML will receive ISO's acceptance using the organization's Fast Track process which spans a timeframe of six months, however, the format has already been greeted with problems in its first steps toward becoming an ISO standard.

The first month of the Fast Track submission process is known as the Contradictory Period where countries can note what they believe are contradictions between current standards and the proposed standard. For OOXML, the Contradictory Period just came to an end, and 19 countries submitted comments and/or objections although the exact number of objections is unclear. In short, a contradiction can be anything from a grammatical mistake to a glaring technical flaw.

On his blog yesterday, ConsortiumInfo's Andy Updegrove analyzed the situation. "This may not only be the largest number of countries that have ever submitted contradictions in the ISO/IEC process, but nineteen responses is greater than the total number of national bodies that often bother to vote on a proposed standard at all," he said. "When it is recalled that any national body responding would first have had to wade through the entire 6,039 pages of the specification itself, and then compose, debate and approve its response in only 30 days, this result is nothing less than astonishing."

According to Updegrove, Ecma has been given until February 28 to respond to the contradictions with proposed solutions. Once the managing body of the Fast Track process has an opportunity to review the solutions, it will decide how the process will proceed.

The ISO problem isn’t the only issue OOXML has faced in the past week. Apparently, both Texas and Minnesota are trying to follow in Massachusetts' footsteps by introducing bills that would make the Open Document Format (ODF) the standard format for government documents. Minnesota State Senator Don Betzold, a proponent for the bill, believes that ODF will serve Minnesota well. "It is my goal to make sure that the public has access to electronic documents in the years to come and that we do not have to rely on licensing agreements or code access," he said.